David Cesarani: A dangerous whiff of anti-Semitism can be smelt amid the cordite

'The voices that warn of Islamophobia risk missing another phobia, one that is just as dangerous'

Muslims and Jews are still coping with the consequences of the terrorist assault on America. But while there has been intense scrutiny of anti-Muslim attitudes, British Jews fear that the focus on Islamophobia has overshadowed another phobia.

In the immediate aftermath of the atrocities, a laudable effort to stem the tide of anti-Muslim feeling was made on both sides of the Atlantic, and to a great extent it succeeded. The government is even contemplating a law that will make Islamophobic utterances an offence. Little has been said, however, about the lies and abuse directed at Jews, Zionism, and Israel.

While there is undoubtedly a connection between the hostility which many Arabs and Muslims feel towards America and Israel, the commonplace explanation for the atrocities in the United States of America and the animosity towards Israel have gone beyond the rational. The mythic narrative goes something like this. The upsurge of radical Islam is a protest against Westernisation, American cultural hegemony, capitalism, and the State of Israel that only exists thanks to US backing. Terrorism will end when America ceases to impose its values on the world, helps to end poverty in poor countries, and compels Israel to give the Palestinian people what they want. This pre-conceived storyline bears little relation to actuality.

Islamic countries have historically been both pro- and anti-American. It is as false to suggest that Islam is automatically anti-Western as it is to assume that there is a monolithic "Arab world" or "Islamic world".

The resurgance of Islam began in the 1970s, in a variety of countries, each with its own context. In Egypt, President Sadat courted Islamic groups to help replace secular left-wing ideologies. President Nimeiri in Sudan manipulated Islam to clothe his rule with legitimacy. In Pakistan in 1979 to 1980, Zia ul-Haq instrumentalised religion in his struggle with President Bhutto – who had himself in the 1960s attempted to mobilise Islam in support of his People's Party. In Iran, religion was a vehicle for opposition to the Shah and his Western backers.

America and Israel had little to do with the radicalising dynamic within Muslim countries and Islam. Both later cultivated Islamic militants for their own purposes, but this added marginally to the resurgence. To blame the US for the horror in New York because it helped the mujahedin and the Taliban in Afghanistan is as irrelevant as it is perverse. Islam may have become a vehicle for expressing the rage of the dispossessed, but unless one subscribes to a grotesque conspiracy theory that sees globalisation as the US attempt to dominate the world, America cannot be held responsible for the economic plight of dozens of countries.

It is equally simplistic to assume that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was the mainspring for Osama bin Laden's murderous campaign. The massacre in America was planned while the peace process was at full throttle, long before Ariel Sharon set foot on Jerusalem's Temple Mount. Bin Laden adopted the Palestinian cause years after he embarked on his career as an anti-American holy warrior. He is now being lionised by Muslims who are aggrieved by Israel's policies, but does this mean that to eliminate support for him the Americans must force the Israelis to meet Palestinian demands?

At the Camp David negotiations, Israel accepted Palestinian statehood and the necessity of withdrawing from most of the occupied territories. Later, Israeli negotiators agreed to share Jerusalem so that it could be the capital of Palestine, and accepted that hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced to flee their homes in 1947 and 1948 and should receive compensation.

The Israeli proposal was far from perfect. But it was based on the "two-state solution" which is universally agreed to be the fairest compromise. The choice is between sharing the land of Israel/Palestine and the rejection of Israel's right to exist. However, in response, Yasser Arafat demanded the right to add three and a half million Palestinians to Israel's population and, in effect, liquify the Jewish state. That was as unacceptable to the Americans as it was to the Israelis and ran against the grain of what almost every Western country sees as the desirable solution.

So why is Israel being accused of obduracy and why is America being flayed for allegedly supporting this intransigence? The presence of a war criminal at the head of the most right-wing government in Israeli history pursuing murderous policies against the Palestinians only explains the current outrage. We need to go back to the UN Durban Conference against racism and also look at the shifting perception of Zionism amongst many Western intellectuals.

At Durban, Jews and Israel were systematically vilified. Zionism was described as a racist and Israel characterised as an alien settler state imposed on the Middle East by Western Imperialism. The Holocaust, when it was not denied outright, was dismissed as the product of an industry designed to buttress Israel's existence.

Much of this rhetoric came from Muslims and Arabs whose anti-Zionism, orchestrated by representatives of the PLO, is understandable. Yet a radical anti-Zionism, with disturbing echoes, has been vented closer to home. The editor of the the New Left Review, Perry Anderson, declared in its July/August issue that "Entrenched in business, government and media, American Zionism has since the sixties acquired a firm grip on the levers of public opinion and official policy towards Israel, that has weakened only on the rarest of occasions." According to Anderson, the Jews have not only conquered Palestine but they have taken control of America, too. Break Jewish power, eliminate Israel, and the causes of terrorism and all the world's other problems will go away.

Saul Friedlander identified Nazi hatred of Jews as unique because it was a "redemptive antisemitism". A favourite Nazi slogan was "The Jews are our misfortune". Hitler told his followers that if Jewish influence was broken and the Jews expelled from the nation, then social conflict and economic distress would disappear, culture would once more be the home of good, sound values, and Germany would again walk tall. Sound familiar?

The urgent voices that warn against the potent menace of Islamophobia are in danger of missing a different phobia, and one that is no less dangerous.

The author is the Professor of Twentieth Century Jewish History at the University of Southampton